Ask Governor Gregoire to be a Champion for our Kids

Right now, Governor Gregoire has a choice. She can slash funding that gives tens of thousands of children the opportunity to walk and bike to school. Or she can keep funding the state’s Safe Routes to School program that improves our children’s safety and health.

Ask Governor Gregoire to be a Champion for our Kids

Right now, Governor Gregoire has a choice. She can slash funding that gives tens of thousands of children the opportunity to walk and bike to school. Or she can keep funding the state’s Safe Routes to School program that improves our children’s safety and health.

Every parent hopes their child will grow-up healthy and strong. And our children get a head start on a life-long active lifestyle when they start each morning walking or biking to school.

But dangerous roads with speeding cars, no sidewalks, and bad crosswalks strike fear in the heart of every parent. So, each morning, parents load-up their kids, drive them a short ways, and wait in long, congested lanes to drop them off at school.

That’s why Washington created the Safe Routes to School program in 2005. By calming streets, building sidewalks and crosswalks, and educating parents, the program has helped get 67,000 children to walk and bike regularly at 168 schools across the state.

A half million children in Washington State live within a half-mile of their school. The safest and easiest way for these kids to get to school should be walking and biking. We have made a lot of progress in recent years, and the state should continue to invest in the opportunity for kids to grow up healthy and active.

But the new federal transportation bill – known as “MAP-21” – ended direct federal funding that had helped more kids safely walk and bike to school.

Governor Gregoire can fix this. MAP-21 doubled funding for road safety improvements, and the Governor has the power to use this new funding to maintain the state’s Safe Routes to School program.

The Governor must make her decision in the next two weeks. She needs to hear from you now about the importance of making it safe for our kids to walk and bike to school.